There’s nothing worse than receiving unwanted attention, and for most of us this seems to be the only attention we ever receive. Why the boy we’ve been secretly eyeing up for months doesn’t even know our name, whilst that scrawny first year we don’t even remember giving our number to texting us on a daily basis is beyond us.

Life isn’t fair, but at least this run down of the four stages of clingers should give us some ability to spot and avoid these lunatics as soon as they approach us…

Stage One Clinger

You were drunk to the point of blindness and woke up alongside that boy from your friend’s course that you thought could have been an Abercrombie model last night. The combination of intense regret and overwhelming nausea means that the last thing you want at eleven am in the morning is a sweaty arm suffocating you in your not quite double student bed. Despite tossing and turning to the point where it could be mistaken for a seizure, they refuse to leave, causing you to have to get up and pretend you have a seriously important lecture to attend. Their insistence on exchanging numbers leads to the “did you have a good night last night?” text later that afternoon that you really don’t want to reply to, which seems to make them keener…

Yeah, that’s really not how it works.

Stage Two Clinger

This is someone that you’ve quite blatantly ignored at any given opportunity. You pretended to be on your phone when you walked past them at Uni, you made your best friend pretend to be your boyfriend to avoid them on a night out and their daily “you out tonight?” texts have gone completely unanswered. Yet somehow, they still persist in trying to contact you. The stage two clinger is keen, yet avoidable and hopefully they’ll get the hint eventually that you’d actually rather spend your day getting lectured by Jeremy Kyle than you would making any form of conversation with them.

Stage Three Clinger

You’ve never seen them outside of Concert Square, and in that one conversation you had with them you remember them distinctly telling you that they only liked Top 40 chart music. Yet after they’ve added you on Facebook and you’ve clicked attending to the next Abandon Silence, they suddenly appear behind you in a Carhartt T-shirt and beanie hat with a red stripe in hand. They somehow manage to remain no further than three metres away from you all night, and leave you going home feeling the need to constantly look over your shoulder, with the fear that they’re going to pop out at any given moment.

Model student one week, ketamine addict the next.

Stage Four – The Ultimate Clinger

The stage four clinger is the ultimate example of desperation. They somehow manage to combine all of the previous stages of clinginess and are quite literally EVERYWHERE. They’re constantly behind you in the Sydney Jones, despite doing a Science degree… They’ve suddenly befriended your entire social group… They turn up at your friend’s birthday drinks, although you’re sure they’ve never met before. The stage four clinger can range from someone who you went on a few dates with and then never spoke to again, to your ex-boyfriend. They could even just be someone who took such a strong liking to you that it’s possible they should be sectioned. Either way, they’re annoying. Really annoying, and if they continue at the rate they’re going at a restraining order is definitely going to be on the cards…

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